Trinity Film Festival Welcomes Award-Winning Judging Panel

Student Festival at Cinestudio is Free and Open to Public

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Hartford, Conn. – The second Trinity Film Festival will be held this Saturday, May 4, 2013 at Cinestudio on the campus of Trinity College.There will be three cash prizes totaling $3,000 and a mystery prize awarded by the audience, which will be unveiled at a post-screening red carpet awards ceremony.A red carpet awards ceremony and buffet-style reception with live music will follow the film screenings. Winning films will be determined by a professional award-winning film panel, listed below.Click here for a short video recap of last year’s event:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BrQMLPAN0EE

2013 Judging Panel:Mary Buck returns on the 2013 panel, after being a part of the inaugural panel last year.Before joining the School of Theatre at Boston University, Buckserved as Warner Brothers TV head of casting and had been Senior Vice President of casting at the studio since 2002, overseeing casting for such WBTV series as Two and a Half Men, The Big Bang Theory, The Vampire Diaries, The Mentalist, Gossip Girl, The Closer, and Chuck. Before Warner Bros. TV, Buck was a leading independent casting director, working with Susan Edelman as a partner in Buck/Edelman Casting for more than 20 years.During that time, she cast more than 60 television pilots and nearly 70 MOWs, including The Wonder Years, Malcolm in the Middle, and Life with Judy Garland: Me and My Shadows. She has won five Artios Awards; has been nominated for two Emmy Awards, and in 2004, along with Susan Edelman, she received the Hoyt Bowers career achievement award from the Casting Society of America.Buck served as president of the Casting Society of America from January 1999–January 2002.

Peter McMorris is one of the original student founders of Cinestudio in 1970, and is currently the co-President. Cinestudio is known nationally as an independent cinema with excellent and eclectic programming, a home to many Film Festivals, with the highest technical standards of picture and sound presentation. Born in Jamaica, his lifelong love of movies was first sparked by a Kingston screening of Jailhouse Rock starring Elvis Presley.

Michael Walsh is also a returning judge, having served in the role on last year’s panel.Dr. Walsh has been a cinema professor since 1986, and has taught in the Cinema Department at the University of Hartford since he co-founded it with Robert Lang in 1997. He was the first Chair of the Department, and served that position until the fall of 2009. For three years, he also programmed the Harpur Film Society at SUNY-Binghamton. He has introduced films and led discussions at the Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art, the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, Massachusetts College of Art and Design, and the Virginia Film Festival.

Lauren Wolkstein received her MFA in film directing from Columbia University's graduate film program and a BA in computer science and film from Duke University. She was named one of the top twenty-five emerging filmmakers through The Film Society of Lincoln Center and the Independent Filmmaker Project's inaugural Emerging Visions program at the 2011 New York Film Festival. Besides her narrative film work, Lauren has also directed commercials for Gucci, and edited several ads for brands such as Juicy Couture, Dickies, and Diet Coke.

Cinestudio is regarded as one of the premier independent movie theaters in the country, complete with an Austrian gold screen curtain and balcony seating.The venue, which shows well over a hundred movies each year, from independent foreign films to Hollywood blockbusters, is host to other significant annual film festivals as well, including the Connecticut Gay and Lesbian Film Festival held each May-June, and the April in Paris (French language) Film Festival.

For more visit www.trinityfilmfestival.org, or visit the Festival's Facebook page at www.facebook.com/TrinityFilmFestival. Follow the Trinity Film Festival on Twitter @trinityfilmfest.